Ian Bremmer (2:09)

I'm doing my best channeling Prof. G. Here, my buddy Scott. I'm here in New York City, exactly the same place I was last time I was on your pod.

Jessica Tarlov (2:17)

Okay, great. I'm in New York City too, but it's great to have you. I'm a tremendous fan of yours and always appreciate your commentary and insights. And we're talking your top risks report. 20th year, right?

Ian Bremmer (2:32)

20Th, 28th since I started Eurasia Group, 20th year of doing the top risk reports. When you say that, it feels like a long time, but, you know, I think I'm only halfway through, so who knows, you know, God willing.

Jessica Tarlov (2:46)

Well, I wish you a long life and that we talk about many risk reports as time goes on. But I wanted to start with risk number three, which I'm sure you're getting tons of questions about the Don Row doctrine already proven true not even a week into the new year. As we're recording this, we're in New York City and so is Nicholas Mauro in a holding cell in Brooklyn. His wife is here as well. They're in American custody, have pleaded not guilty to drug trafficking and other federal charges. What was your initial reaction to the news of the US Intervention in Venezuela and bringing Maduro here to New York?

Ian Bremmer (3:23)

It was a staggering military success operationally. The Russians wish they could have pulled this off. We'd be having a very different conversation about Ukraine if their military had a fifth of the professionalism and capabilities that the Americans do. Interestingly, this has been discussed inside the Trump administration for months now. But three months ago, they didn't have intelligence on Maduro's whereabouts and habits. They didn't have people inside the administration that were working with them, and now they did. And so they were able to give the go ahead. And the fact that they were able to pull that off over the course of a few months and put that plan together is a real operational victory for President Trump. He wanted to see the back of Maduro. He did. There are no American boots on the ground. There were no American servicemen or women that were killed in the operation. And it wasn't just removing Maduro. It's bringing him to the United States. It's having him see justice in an American court system with all of the media and the attention and the rest that will play out over the course of months. All of that is exactly what Trump and his advisors in Cabinet were hoping for. So from an initial impact perspective, it was massively positive for them. Having said that, there are lots of second order questions about Trump doubling down across the region, about how one goes about running Venezuela with the same regime is still in place. Even though Maduro is gone, everybody else is still there. What does that look like and what are the knock on implications of all of this? Because there is a level of if you end up breaking it, you have responsibility. And even if Trump doesn't believe that that is true, that will be seen to be true by a lot of people. So, I mean, if Trump could just stop the clock right there with Maduro confined and in his, you know, sort of handcuffs and the rest, it'd be a very different story than what I think we'll be talking about over the course of the year. And that's why, of course, Donroe Doctrine is number three, because it's not just about Trump getting rid of Maduro and having. When we said we thought that Maduro was gonna be out, we'd been saying that for months. We didn't think he'd see the end of the year. But that's very different from how the United States deciding that it will be the arbiter of what happens in its hemisphere, broadly defined. That's gonna be a tricky one.

Jessica Tarlov (6:18)

Absolutely. I mean, it's. There are so many pieces to this puzzle. And I like that you began with emphasizing what an incredible military operation this has been, because I know that's been a source of. For the administration that they kind of. They don't get that conversation because everyone jumps to the stuff that they don't like about what. That they. About what they have done. But I do want to talk about the Don Roe Doctrine aspect of this. So we know that Venezuela had Russia operating there, China operating there, Iran's there, you know, Hezbollah. We saw in the swearing in of Delsey Rodriguez, who was the vice president, is now the president, that she's very chummy with, the ambassadors from all of our adversarial countries that I just named, not kissing any American ambassador or with a warm embrace. So what do you think that the Don Row doctrine spells out for the other countries in Trump's western hemisphere? And do you think that things in Venezuela actually are going to change?

Ian Bremmer (7:17)

Well, first of all, we may need to start rethinking how we talk about adversaries. I mean, Trump does. For Trump, the top adversary of the United States are his political opponents in the United States. And when he meets with Xi Jinping, he deals with him in many ways as a peer. And he doesn't afford that level of treatment with the Europeans, for example, even though the Europeans are NATO allies of the United States. But China, he talks about having a G2 relationship. So, I mean, does Trump really see China as a core adversary? If you look at the Russia, Ukraine war, which Trump said he was gonna end, he's putting a lot more pressure on the Ukrainians, who the Americans have been supporting, than he is on the Russians, because he wants to bring the war to an end. But does it matter? That one's an Adversary and one isn't. I mean, when he invited Putin to Anchorage and he rolled out the red carpet, and when he sees Zelensky in Mar a Lago, there ain't no red carpet and there's no Cabinet member meeting him at the plane. So I'm just saying that. Not because I think that everything is completely through the looking glass and topsy turvy, but it is changing. It is changing, and the Don Row doctrine implies that it's changing. And we're gonna need to rethink how American power is projected as a consequence. So China's really interesting point. Trump wants a better relationship with China right now because he knows that the Chinese have the capacity and willingness to hit him back in a way that he doesn't want. And so I thought it was very interesting that when Maduro was captured that despite the blockade on Venezuelan tankers, a significant number of tankers were allowed to go to bring oil to China. And part of that is, you know, wanna be nicer to the new Venezuelan government because you're expecting them to do what you want. Part of that is they don't have oil storage. You don't wanna destroy the economy if you're gonna have to rebuild it and invest in it. But part of it is, well, we don't wanna antagonize China. Just like Trump called the Japanese prime minister and said, maybe calm down a little on Taiwan a few weeks ago after she made those statements that the Chinese took such exception to. So there's that aspect of it. And then we can talk about what the implications are of all of this for governing Venezuela going forward for Mexico, for Colombia, for Cuba, for Greenland and Denmark. And I'll go wherever you want, but, I mean, there's a whole bunch of regional stuff that is super important.

Jessica Tarlov (10:03)

Let's start, I guess, with Greenland, because, you know, we're recording this on Tuesday, January 6th, and this morning, European leaders released. Released a very strongly worded letter in defense of their Naito ally. So. And the Danish prime minister made a statement yesterday about this as well. Trump's been threatening Greenland, you know, since he got into office, but people are taking him a lot more seriously and literally since what happened in Venezuela. So, you know, how seriously do you think we should be taking Trump's threats of doing what he did to Maduro cross his hemisphere, as he would call it?

Ian Bremmer (10:41)

I mean, Greenland, from Trump's perspective, is part of the Don Roe Doctrine. And Stephen Miller made that point very clearly last night. He said, we have to have it. And Miller was one of the three architects of the Venezuela policy, along with Marco Rubio, Secretary of State and John Ratcliffe, the Director of the CIA, he would be core to a Greenland policy. The weird thing about Greenland, Venezuela, you know, again, same regime is in place, still being run by the actual Venezuelan people. Their policies are gonna need to change according to Trump, or else there will be military action. But Maduro himself was a dictator. He was not democratically elected. They had elections. He refused to accept the outcome. He's brutal. He traffics massive amounts of drugs. I mean, all sorts of the things, right? Greenland is not just part of the territory of a clear and steadfast ally. I mean, this is a country that immediately was sending troops to help the US in Afghanistan, right? And died in larger numbers per capita than the Americans did, right? So like Denmark is a serious ally of the US and anything the US needs in Greenland, if the US wants more access for bases, if they want intelligence listening posts, if they want to give Elon a launch pad for SpaceX and Starlink, if they want access to exploitation of critical minerals and resources, anything they want. If the Americans are prepared to just pick up the phone, call the Danish Prime Minister and negotiate, they will get those things, right? No problem. So why is there a problem here, right? Because with Venezuela, it was very clear why there were problems, right? I mean, you know, you had Maduro, who's dancing and making fun of Trump and saying, I'm never going anywhere. You've got the drugs, you've got, you know, the immigration, the 8 million migrants, 8 million migrants from Venezuela illegally destabilizing the region. All these things. Last I can tell, there ain't no fentanyl coming from Greenland, right? We don't have that problem. So what the fuck is it, right? I'm legitimately angry about this because it's so stupid. And as best I can tell, someone showed Trump Greenland on a globe and he's like, wow, it's really big, even though it's not right? And we should have that. And he wants it to be American. And Trump, there isn't a plan, but they are developing a plan. There are many people in the administration that have been tasked with coming up for a plan for Greenland to no longer be a part of Denmark, for it to be sovereign territory of the United States. That is the intention and that is under no circumstances workable for Denmark or its Nordic allies or I think, most of Europe. This is an incredibly stupid own goal in my view, especially because Trump is not a dictator. Like anything Trump does, another president comes in. In 2029, they can undo all of this. So why are you destroying decades of goodwill with committed allies and actually putting in jeopardy the transatlantic alliance, the NATO alliance, because you've decided that you need to paint Greenland as part of the United States. For the life of me, I have no idea why they think this is so important, why Trump has decided this is so important. It feels like madness, but it is the actual plan. We're not making this up. That is the intention. And they are not talking to the Danish government about this. They intend to talk directly with Greenland. Now, the good news, there's not been much good news here. The good news is there is truly no intention to invade Greenland. They're not going to take it militarily. They believe that through a combination of inducements and threats, overt and covert information and disinformation, some plan will come together that will get them Greenland. We will see. But they intend. This is absolutely a priority.

Jessica Tarlov (15:31)

Well, they do always think that there's something that someone wants bad enough to do what you want. I doubt that turning Greenland over as a sovereign nation would be that. I kind of think of it, you know, Willy Wonka, Veruca Salt, how she's like, daddy, I want it and I want it now. That's how I think about Trump.

Ian Bremmer (15:47)

Well, that was a talented squirrel, to be fair. Right? I mean, I understand why you would want one of those squirrels. And it was only one squirrel. There were lots of squirrels.

Jessica Tarlov (16:00)

That's a great point. There are lots of squirrels.

Ian Bremmer (16:02)

There are lots of squirrels.

Jessica Tarlov (16:03)

Do you feel like the Donroe Doctrine is turning us into just a regional superpower versus a global superpower?

Ian Bremmer (16:12)

No, not at all. So the Monroe Doctrine was in the Trump National Security Strategy document a month plus ago, which is why we put Donroe Doctrine in the risk report. It's very clear that this is a foreign policy priority for Trump, but it is not in any way a limit of his ambition. The United States is doing more, not less, with the Gulf states now. They're doing more, not less with Israel. They are certainly exercised with Iran, for example. They've just approved the largest ever sale of military equipment and componentry to Taiwan. I mean, there are lots of other examples like that. So I don't think it's a limit, but. But I also think that Trump's. In 2025. If you and I had been having this conversation, and Scott and I did back in January, we were talking about tariffs and how much tariffs were gonna be the principal US Tool to project power internationally. Well, that's run a lot of its course. The United States has now done a bunch of deals. They've been hit back by the Chinese. They are worried about affordability, so they have to actually get prices down. And Trump's worried about midterm elections, so he's not gonna have the same ability to project economic power. And that's even before we talk about the Supreme Court's ruling on the IEEPA process, which is likely to constrain him somewhat, in my view. So how is he gonna project power? How is he gonna get his wins around the world? And the answer is much more militarily, where the US Actually does have an asymmetrical advantage. Intelligence, where the US does have an asymmetrical advantage. Cyber, where the US does have an asymmetrical advantage, especially against smaller countries all over the world. And the Donroe doctrine, I think, really does play into that because of course, in America's backyard, I mean, China may be the largest economic trading partner for most of these countries, but militarily, the Americans clearly call the shots.

Jessica Tarlov (18:19)

Yeah, I guess by extension then, do you think that this has what we did in Venezuela or the way that he's thinking about foreign policy, set a precedent where China is looking at Taiwan with even like more rose colored glasses, or Putin's licking his lips a little bit more about Ukraine. I'm, I'm sure you saw that Fiona Hill's testimony from 2019 is circulating around saying, you know, Putin was thinking about us, you know, a swap. Right. That if the US could get Venezuela, we could get Ukraine. So do you think that these other powers, I won't call them straight adversaries, as per your earlier point, but are thinking, yes, there's a lot of military might there, but there's also somebody who thinks that, you know, if you're in a big position of power, you can go in and take a leader out of a country and, you know, take over yourself in quotes.

Ian Bremmer (19:10)

Not. I mean, I understand the question, of course, and it's a very logical question to ask. It's an important question to ask, I would say. Not really. It's not the way I think about it. So, I mean, and we should take both of these in turn because they're different. Taiwan is considered by China, not by the United States, but considered by China to be a domestic issue. And so it's not a matter for international law to determine. And China fully expects to take and integrate Taiwan into reintegrate, as they would describe it, into mainland China. And the reason they're not is because it's heavily defended, it's heavily fortified, it's an island. And it's because they have technology that China really needs in terms of TSMC and semiconductors. And it would be a disaster for the Chinese to try to take that risk at this point. But they're doing everything they can to ensure that in the future, maybe the not so distant future, that that won't be the case. And so, no, I don't think that the US Venezuela action changes that. I do think that China's recognition that they can give back as good as Trump gets on critical minerals and on tariffs and that they can squeeze the Americans and leverage the Americans and that works, make the Chinese feel more comfortable, that they can incrementally ratchet up pressure on Taiwan and the Americans won't do much. I do think they feel that, but that's not because of Venezuela. That's because they think that they've now got a better power position on the United States. Russia invaded Ukraine before this, and it's not like, you know, they're going to get any more emboldened. They're emboldened because they see the United States wants to end the war no matter what, and they're willing to cut the Russians a good deal while pressuring Ukraine. Why are they pressuring Ukraine so much more than Russia? Because Ukraine's weaker. So, I mean, I think that I would answer your question differently. I don't think that America's engagement in the law of the jungle emboldens bad actors to act bad. They're bad actors. That means they act bad. They do that anyway. What America's embrace of a G zero world means is that America's friends who have relied on the United States for upholding rule of law, now feel that the United States is not reliable. And so they have to hedge, they have to do more things themselves. They have to play defense and they have to decouple themselves so that the United States can no longer have the same amount of influence and power over them that they have presently. And I see that when I talk to the Canadians, when I talk to the Europeans, the Japanese, the South Koreans, the Australians, everyone has that view. So this is much more of a behavior changing inducement for America's allies than it is for its adversaries.

Jessica Tarlov (22:13)

We'll be right back after a quick break.

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Jessica Tarlov (25:49)

And you bring up the lack of reliability that people who work with us feel, whether, you know, trading partners are supposed to be allies in organization like NATO. And that takes me to your number one risk for this year, which you called the U.S. political Revolution. Walk us through why this one topped the list. I was very happy as a nervous American citizen to see this recognized as a possibility and a huge risk.

Ian Bremmer (26:14)

So we don't think that the US Political revolution is a possibility. We think it's happening. We just don't know if it will be successful or not. And some people want it to be successful and others don't, but we think it's happening. What is it? Trump believes and his supporters agree that the political system was weaponized against him, leading to unprecedented two impeachments, felonies and convictions, felony charges and convictions, and a near assassination, and that that justifies urgently Trump taking political control of the administrative state, making it fully loyal to him, answerable and accountable to him, weaponizing the power ministries of the U.S. specifically the FBI, the Department of justice, the IRS, other such organizations, and ensuring that there are no further checks and balances that constrain the president so that the principal enemies of Trump, and therefore the United States, not Russia, not China, but the Democratic Party in the US can no longer come to power. That is what Trump is intending to do. I think he will likely fail. We can talk about why, but it is very clear through his actions and his efforts that he is on a number of different fronts attempting to bring about such a revolution. And it is also clear that the US Political system has only partially been able to constrain that breakage, breakage of erosion and erosion of norms as well as of actual checks and balances. And in my lifetime, I've seen now three revolutions that have mattered on the global stage. The first with Deng Xiaoping in China opening the economy to the global system, leading to 50 years of unheralded Chinese economic growth. That was successful. Then we saw Gorbachev's political and economic revolution changing the nature of that system over the course of six years. That led to the fall of the Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union. That revolution was unsuccessful. Now we see Trump's political revolution, not an economic revolution, only the second revolution really attempted by a US president. The first was FDR. Trump's is much more structurally significant than FDR's. And we make that comparison in detail in the report, and we don't know if it's gonna be successful. It's actually in process right now. But given that the US Is the most powerful country in the world with more allies than anyone else has that rely on it, then obviously that kind of uncertainty and structural change in the US Is gonna be the top risk.

Jessica Tarlov (29:14)

Yeah, absolutely. I would like you to talk more about why you expect that this is more likely to fail than suc. And we'll make sure, for those who are going to be watching this, that we put that incredible chart from your risk report up that, you know, plots Trump's executive actions and the norms and checks and balances that they're breaking. Because when you look at a chart like that, you think, it's only been a year. He has three more years. I mean, and he could be a lame duck. You know, Democrats retake the House and the midterms, but that guy plows through everything. And we're talking about executive orders anyway, Right?

Ian Bremmer (29:48)

And I mean, you know, I thought it was really important to show that the most important actions as they were covered over the years.

Jessica Tarlov (29:55)

It's an awesome chart. It's scary, but it's awesome.

Ian Bremmer (29:57)

But, you know, the funny thing is there's a whole bunch of things that got a lot of news, they got a lot of headlines, but they were in that bottom left quadrant. And here I'm talking about the actions that didn't actually break norms and they don't actually break the law, but they were reported as if they did. And so this is part of the problem, too, is that people's hair is on fire all the time. And so orange mad bad. Everything he does is equally horrible. No, there's a filter, too. And in his first term, almost none of his acts were inherently revolutionary. Increasingly, they are. And watching that trajectory and that evolution is extremely important. And then see to what extent are they being checked? Are they being stopped? Like, for example, when he puts those investigations against Letitia, James and Comey and it turns out he fails. Right. So that was an effort, but there was pushback. You know, there were others, like the. What was it? The Act Blue investigation investigation that was successful. That's a completely chilling revolutionary act that will have an impact on the ability and willingness to donate to political opposition in the United States. So, I mean, you've got to look at all of that stuff to understand where they're going.

Jessica Tarlov (31:14)

Absolutely. There's. I don't want to have Trump derangement syndrome, which I've been accused of many times in my life, but I do want to go to another Trump themed risk, which was number six on your list. State capitalism with American characteristics. What does that mean in the US Context, and how is it different from traditional industrial policy or normal government intervention?

Ian Bremmer (31:36)

Well, it's only number six and so no big deal. Well, these risks are rated and they're rated on the basis of likelihood, imminence and impact. And since the US Is by far the most impactful thing on the global stage, if a U.S. risk is only number six. Right. Then that implies that it's nowhere close to the stuff that we've been talking about so far, just to be clear. So, I mean, yes, we are seeing state capitalism and industrial policy play a much bigger role in certain aspects of the US Economy. So when Trump says there's gonna be a golden share for US Steel, and the American president will decide how that will be used or not, so no, you're gonna keep that factory open that actually you otherwise would have closed because it doesn't make any economic sense. And that's normally a private sector decision, but now it isn't. And we're gonna allow Nvidia to sell these chips to China because they just effectively lobbied me as the president. We're gonna take a stake directly in intel because we already bailed them out, but that's gonna be retroactive. Now we're going to actually say that we're just gonna take an equity share. And by the way, Japan, if you want access to the American market, you're gonna have to invest $550 billion in a facility and we're gonna decide which those companies are going to be. All of those things are injecting Washington and the person of Trump into the investment process, into the capital process. And it's also. There's also kleptocracy. There's also. Well, Pakistan is investing in Trump's family's financial crypto company. And so the US Is gonna give more access and more time to the Pakistanis, and that'll damage the US India relationship. And there's a lot of that going on, too. Now, again, there's a political revolution underway in the US That I think will fail. There's not an economic revolution going in the U.S. the U.S. has long been a system economically where the private sector captures the regulatory environment, where money speaks loudly in the political system, where the lobby is extraordinarily powerful and undermines competition. And it's a country that has had industrial policy before, but we have not seen this level of personalization of industrial policy well beyond strategic sectors that we're now seeing under Trump. It's not structurally changing the system, but it's adding a lot of incremental costs and uncertainty as you inject the politics.

Jessica Tarlov (34:19)

I think a lot of kind of normie lay people are wondering about the unraveling of a lot of these policies if that were to happen in 2029, because you say, Trump's not a dictator, we're going to have a new president. It could be J.D. vance or Marco Rubio. It could be a Democrat, I don't know. But do you think that this approach to capitalism will be part of the Republican economic policy going forward, or is this something that is distinctly Trumpian?

Ian Bremmer (34:49)

I think it'll be part of a Democratic Party, too. When you break norms and you put more power in the hands of the political system and the executive, they will use that for whatever political ends they want. So if today we have more state capitalism and it's used to support oil companies that are gonna go into Venezuela tomorrow under a Democrat, it'll be used to promote renewable energy and their favorite companies, but they're not gonna willingly give that power up. Right? And we see so much of this norm erosion. The same thing will be true. I mean, if you have the attacks on corporate media, which right now are being directed against ABC News or cnn, you know, in the future, they can and will be used against Fox and Newsmax. And remember, Trump was a sitting president, and he was actually deplatformed from Twitter and from Facebook and from the Apple Store. And I found that very disturbing as a decision that was being made against the sitting American president. But now, of course, Trump has control over Truth social media, Elon has control over X. And they're trying to get control to political loyalists. For TikTok. I have no doubt that if Democrats are in power in the future, those things will be shifted politically for their benefit. So, I mean, whether it's JD or whether it's the Democrats, you break these norms and it's a slippery slope. I mean, it's not like Trump suddenly is the cause of all these problems. Trump is not the cause. Trump is a symptom. Right? Trump is. He's a symptom. He's a beneficiary, and he's an accelerant, and he's a powerful accelerant. But these things have been coming for a long time. And part of the reason that we're seeing a political revolution in the United States right now is that of the people that said in 2024 that democracy was an important reason for them to vote, not the most important reason, but important reason. More of those people voted for Trump than voted for Kamala because they thought the political system was already so captured, so rigged, that they wanted someone who was willing to break it. That is spiraling down. The United States today is by far the most powerful economy. It's by far the most powerful military. It's incredibly innovative, it's got the world's reserve currency, and yet it is by far the most dysfunctional political system among the advanced industrial economies. The US Political system is in deep decline, and that that imbalance is causing a lot of uncertainty.

Jessica Tarlov (37:39)

Absolutely. And we're going to get to talking about Europe in a couple as well, because there are themes that certainly are aligned with what's going on here, though not as extreme, I guess. I want to talk about the energy race. AI so risk number two, overpowered. And also risk number eight, AI eats its users, which I love the name of both touching on this energy race between the US And China and the impact that AI will continue to have on society. You say that China has mastered the electric stack, energy, batteries, grids, manufacturing, while the US Is betting that whoever builds the smartest models wins. Maybe my favorite line from the report was, washington is asking the world to buy 20th century energy, while Beijing offers 21st century infrastructure. The floor is yours to talk about that.

Ian Bremmer (38:26)

I want to bring this back to the Don Roe Doctrine, because the United States has all of this military influence, and look at what they could do to Maduro. And yet in America's backyard, which Trump has said we will have dominance over, the most important trading partner of most of those countries is not the US It's China. So the Americans have the military influence, but the Chinese have the economic influence. And there's no way for the Americans to become dominant again economically in their own backyard unless they are producing the Most advanced technologies these countries need, and they need inexpensive energy to power AI, to feed their people, to keep their countries and their economies going. And the Americans have this staggering strength in oil and gas and coal, 13.5 million barrels a day. And now the US has just exercised some level of dominion over a country that has the largest proven oil reserves in the world, Venezuela. Okay, that's a great, great story. If you are also going to build energy that's getting cheaper, which is the wind, the solar, the nuclear, the batteries, and the supply chain to support it. And yet the Americans have said, no, no, no, no, no, we're gonna keep fighting on oil and gas and coal, which is not getting cheaper over time, and we're gonna tie our other hand, our stronger hand, behind our backs. Right. And we are not going to develop what the Chinese are becoming dominant in. Now, American AI is today more advanced than Chinese AI, but the energy that you need to power it is being developed at scale and cheaper and exportable by the world's first electrostate, China. And what really bothers me about US strategy right now is it's so short term. You've gotta invest for the long term, especially when you have a political system that doesn't work for the long term. It's a short term political system, which means you have to therefore put policies in place that can actually be consistent from one political cycle to the next. The Chinese don't need to worry about that.

Jessica Tarlov (40:41)

No, they don't. And Trump is jealous of them for it.

Ian Bremmer (40:44)

He's very jealous of that.

Jessica Tarlov (40:45)

Yeah, yeah. Do you think that this path that we're on, the short term gain path, I guess, versus the long term plan, that we can rectify that, or we're just like, it's a careening train car and it's not going to stop, especially with this leadership. Because some of the things that you're talking about, you know, that we want to fight this war with old tools essentially, that links directly to the politics of maga, Right. And the base that they are trying to speak to. So is there an off ramp for us where we can kind of meet China where they are?

Ian Bremmer (41:23)

You know, I mean, the fact that the Americans were so surprised by China's dominance in critical minerals, which powers a lot of this stuff, you know, definitely led the US to say we need to start prioritizing investments in those companies and aligning with other countries that have access to those critical minerals. The US has belatedly said battery technology is something the US should be taking a very serious look at. And investing in and hopefully that will pick up. Trump has decided that solar and wind are basically woke climate response and not the increasingly inexpensive energy of the future that the Americans need to dominate and another president can make a change. But again, going in, going out of these decisions every few years while you have another country at scale that is investing vastly more and bringing far more electricity onto the grid just puts the Americans behind the eight ball. So we made this a risk and it's starting to really hit because AI is really important and you need to power it in 2026. I don't think the Americans have lost the game, but they've made a really bad bet and the longer that bet stays on the table and you ride with it, the more you're going to lose.

Jessica Tarlov (42:52)

We'll be right back.

Ian Bremmer (42:59)

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Jessica Tarlov (44:54)

We're back with more from Ian Bremmer. If Scott were here, he would definitely want to talk to you about the AI bubble, which he's obsessed with. What's your take on what these AI companies that are propping up our stock market to absurd levels are going to do in 2026?

Ian Bremmer (45:12)

So Scott will have a better take than I will on how frothy the AI bubble is. I don't, I'm not a stock watcher. I don't really have a sense of how overvalued they may or may not be. But I do think that it's very clear that what's driving AI right now is happening outside of the regulatory process, outside of governance, outside of coordination. It is, we believe in this, it is transformative, it's revolutionary and it's massive. And so we just need to win, win, win, accelerate, accelerate, accelerate. And as that's happening, there are certainly going to be investors that are gonna put more pressure on where's our return. And so I think that the nearer term risk, whether or not there's a bubble, is that these companies are going to start facing much more pressure to provide commercialized AI product. And what worries me there, and it's only some of the companies, cause some of the Companies are selling B2B, they're selling industrial product, national security product, data sets that are actually contained and known, so you don't have the hallucinations. The Chinese are also doing a lot of that. And I think there's going to be incredible gains in efficiency, productivity, huge inventions coming from that. Very excited about the biotech field, for example, very excited about reducing waste and increasing efficiency in traffic flows and, you know, sort of for airline travel, things like that, all of this is great. But for the companies that specifically are selling AI to consumers, the social media equivalent, the Google search equivalent, if they have to start making lots of money on really gaudy return expectations, what they will do will be very damaging to society because they're already injecting AI into our body politic without testing it. And that's so much more dangerous than social media. I mean, these AIs, which we already, they already effectively have made the Turing Test obsolete. Most people, if they're online with the most advanced AIs, do not know if they are interacting with a person or, or with an AI. And yet those AIs are programmed to make sure that you are engaging with them and they want you to be happy with them. They want to give you what you want more of what you want, even though they have no affect whatsoever. Now, by the way, there are people like this. We call them sociopaths, and we absolutely try to spend as little time with them as possible. We keep our kids away from them because they're predators. And yet when we apply that to the AI model, we say it's okay to test that real time on our body politic and on our society. And my answer to that is, no, it's not. And that's gonna cause a lot of damage, in my view. I'm deeply concerned about that.

Jessica Tarlov (48:27)

Yeah, it's strange that we're kind of just like letting that one slide in the conversations about regulations or even like banning phones in schools. And then there's kind of lip service paid to how insane it is that people are having full relationships with these chatbots like you saying that, you know, they don't know who they're talking to, and no one seems to really care about finding out. And when you have a government that doesn't want to legislate about these things, and I'm not saying that the Democrats are perfect in terms of it, but it's, it's frightening stuff.

Ian Bremmer (48:56)

I mean, the Europeans are turning away from regulation of AI because they know that they don't have any tech companies, and they desperately need the competitiveness and the growth. The only country that's really doing it is China, because their view is if our citizens are gonna hallucinate, they're certainly not gonna hallucinate from an AI. It's gonna be chat CCP, right? Not chatGPT. And so they are really throttling what they're allowing their AI companies to do with consumers while they're putting their foot on the gas, on industrial and security, national security uses. But in the United States, in Europe, and in the global south, it's basically the Wild West.

Jessica Tarlov (49:35)

Fascinating. I want to jump to Europe or back to Europe. Now to Your risk number four, Europe under siege. France, Germany, and the UK all enter 2026 with weak governments, rising populism, and no margin for reform. Why is this moment uniquely dangerous for Europe's ability to govern itself? And you write that the center cannot hold. As the co host of a podcast called Raging Moderates that stuck out to me, just hearing that the center or the middle cannot hold is. That's scary.

Ian Bremmer (50:05)

Well, the big change geopolitically in the world over the last 20 years has not been the US in decline. It's been America's allies in decline. And we see that demographically we see that economically in terms of productivity, we see that in the lack of defense spending. And if the United States is now saying, okay, well, we don't really want to defend you anymore, we're not really interested in providing that support. In fact, we'd rather have a weaker European so that we can deal with individual European countries that'll be more aligned with what we want. And the Russians on the other side are saying, we want Ukraine and we're gonna cause all sorts of problems for you on your borders because you've expanded NATO in a way that is threatening to us. And so there's all this asymmetric warfare that's happening from Russia. Suddenly the Europeans are getting it from both sides. They've got to spend much more on defense, they gotta spend much more on infrastructure. They have to build their competitiveness at a time that their social contract right, has been providing so much for people. And they're demanding that spending continues. Interest rates are higher, borrowing rates are higher, and their indebtedness levels are high. So this is kind of a no win situation for Europe. They should have been making this bet 20, 30 years ago that they needed to focus more on growth and more on defense because the Americans wouldn't always be there to defend them. And because Russia was going to be a threat, they didn't. And so now, when they really have to, when their backs are to the wall and it's urgent, they also have inside their own countries a whole bunch of people saying, we don't support this EU thing, we don't want immigration and we don't want to spend money on anybody else. And we want euro skepticism, power for our own nations. And so in Germany, in France and in the uk, the three big countries, you have increasingly very, very weak centrist governments that are not likely to be effective and may not last may fall. And the Americans are going to help that process and the Russians are going to help that process. Reform party in the UK, AfD in Germany, national rally in France.

Jessica Tarlov (52:16)

Why do you think that Washington prefers a fragmented Europe?

Ian Bremmer (52:21)

So this is the big foreign policy difference between Trump and previous administrations. Certainly Biden, who was a noted Atlanticist, Trump, first of all, because Trump likes leaders that he likes, and that means Orban and Bardella and Le Pen and Farage, all of whom have been like with Elon Musk as well, like with J.D. vance, have been saying, we want Maga, we're Europe firsters. So that's one reason, is that level of affinity with that specific, more populist right movement across Europe second is that Trump understands that with weak countries, he can fafo. With strong countries, he's got a taco, right? So China's a taco situation. Venezuela is a fafo situation. The EU together, if they're strong, is a lot more taco. If they're weak and they're vulnerable, it's fafo. So he likes that. So he doesn't want to deal with the eu. He doesn't want to deal with Brussels. He doesn't want to deal with the world's largest common market that can engage in regulatory processes and trade processes that are gonna be challenging and competitive with the United States. He wants to cut individual deals with leaders that he can bully around. And that is, again, from a short term perspective. If you don't think a strong EU matters for the promotion of rule of law, if you don't think international law matters, you don't care about the promotion of democracy, about human rights, about those things which the Americans have had a spotty record on but is generally cared about more than not. But if you think those things don't matter, and if rather it's just about power and you're gonna be the apex predator, then why would you want the eu? So that is really a very different worldview that you saw J.D. vance put on display at the Munich Security Conference last February when he said, you guys are the enemy, not the Russians or the Chinese. And you saw it to a degree in the National Security Strategy document when the Trump administration was talking about the civilizational decay that was happening inside Europe, which, again, I think Europe has lots of problems. I think the Americans have lots of problems. They're different problems. But at the end of the day, there has been a level of trust because the values have been very simpatico, because we all sort of care about rule of law, about individual rights, about democracy. We have some different priorities in how we want to spend our money and what matters most to us. And our laws are a little different. But ultimately, we've all wanted to have this United Nations, IMF, World Bank, NATO, all these institutions that came out of World War II that the Americans created. But now the United States is saying, we're no longer committed to any of those institutions or rules, while our allies are saying, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, we really need those things. And they do. They need them a lot more than the Americans do. But the lack of American commitment is creating a crisis for Europe. And that's even before we talk about this immediate Greenland problem.

Jessica Tarlov (55:44)

Yeah, well, I mean, the immediate Greenland problem What you were just saying about how much more Europe needs a strong NATO. In particular, links to your risk number five, Russia's second front predicting the escalation. This come from the hybrid war between Russia and NATO. What does that really mean?

Ian Bremmer (56:01)

That means that at a time where the Europeans are doing all the spending to support Ukraine and the war is bleeding Russia a lot and their economy is taking strain, they understand that if they can just divide Europe off from the US or if they can divide Europe internally, that's the way that they can win this war. And what we've seen is an increase in asymmetric warfare from Russia into all of the frontline European states. We've seen the cyber attacks increase. We've seen the ships dragging anchor and destroying the fiber lines and attacking gas lines and the rest. We've seen, what do you call it, the drones going into Poland and Romania. We've seen weather balloons going into Lithuania. We've seen also all sorts of Russian money paying for people to engage in vandalism and destruction of property, critical infrastructure, even an attempt to assassinate the CEO of the largest defense company in Germany. And now we're seeing NATO frontline countries recognizing this is a real danger to them, and they need to start collectively taking action against Russia. And maybe the Americans won't support that. But together we're seeing talk of offensive cyber attacks against Russia. We're seeing talks of needing to take down those drones as they come in, take countermeasures, and to respond to jet fighters that are going into the territorial airspace of these frontline countries. And all of that is significantly escalating the nature of the risk, because Russia isn't just at war in Ukraine. Russia is actually engaged in a shadow war in NATO.

Jessica Tarlov (57:54)

Uplifting stuff.

Ian Bremmer (57:56)

Well, top risks is how we start the year. You know, what do you do?

Jessica Tarlov (57:59)

Yeah. Then we'll evaluate at the end, and hopefully it won't be as bleak as it could feel right now. Okay, I want to wrap up by asking you at the end of the report. You say that you're not optimistic, but you're hopeful. So what is keeping you hopeful?

Ian Bremmer (58:14)

It's easy to say, the technology is great and so exciting and all that's easy. And I think there are a couple of bigger things that make me hopeful. The first is that we're not heading to World War 3. This is the United States abdicating its own institutions and its own leadership and maybe its own values, is leading other countries around the world to say, wait a second, we like a lot of these institutions. We Like a lot of these values, and they're hedging and they're creating alternative trade agreements and alternative ways to make sure that they can defend themselves. And that is that they're not. We're not just seeing a beggar thy neighbor policies everywhere. We are seeing the creation of more resilience. That's one thing that makes me feel more optimistic. Countries like India that are trying to reach out and build stronger relations with the rest of the G7 and with all of the global south and even stabilize their relationship with China. India's got 1.5 billion people. That's a big thing for them to do. And they're growing at 8%. Right. The Gulf states are saying, well, wait a second, we need to make sure that the region is stable, and if the Americans can't be counted on, we're gonna have to do more. And they were the ones that drove that summit with Trump on the Gaza ceasefire. And we ended up getting a Security Council resolution, a Security Council where the Russians and the Chinese abstained, and everyone else voted in favor after the United States was isolated completely on Israel just two weeks before. And why? Because the regional powers were actually saying, we care about our region, we care about our backyard. So that matters. And it was constructive. It's not all just donroe doctrine everywhere. But maybe the thing that makes me most hopeful is that the American political system needed a crisis. I mean, people were getting angrier and they were getting less aligned with globalism. They didn't like the forever wars in Afghanistan and Iraq fought on their backs that people lied about. And they didn't like the free trade when you're hollowing out US labor and not taking care of your own workers. And they didn't like all of the immigration. If you weren't going to ensure that the average American was getting a fair shot. And so there was going to be a breaking point. And that breaking point is not just driven by Trump. That breaking point is also driven by average Americans. And I think that when you create that level of disruption, there's the opportunity to do things differently. And, you know, most human beings that you and I know are people that we are happy spending time with. We're social animals. They're not all narcissists and sociopaths. And so, yeah, am I optimistic that we're gonna get to the right place? No, because geopolitically, there are a lot of bad things going on. I think there'll be some really ugly surprise crises that aren't in the report as well. But I'm hoping, hopeful. Because when human beings get together, especially when it's hard and when suddenly we break things, that's when we all pay attention. So that makes me hope.

Jessica Tarlov (61:11)

I like it. And I also like to think that I don't spend that much time with sociopaths and psychopaths, though some days, you know, we just all feel that way. Ian Bremmer, thank you so much for your time. The risk report is available. It's fantastic. It was awesome to talk to you. Thank you.

Ian Bremmer (61:26)

Nice finally meeting you in person.

Jessica Tarlov (61:28)

Online friends become real. Well, we're still kind of online, but you know what I mean. Anyway, thank you.